A preeminent photographer of the Shakers from 1923 until his death in 1939, William F. Winter, Jr. created an extensive body of modernist photographic images that allowed curators, collectors, writers, and other enthusiasts to claim the Northeast’s Shaker communities as vital American predecessors of modernism. In the last 20 years, a burgeoning literature has begun to analyze 20th-century representations of the Shakers. Born in Albany, New York, in 1899, Winter worked at General Electric as an industrial photographer where he fashioned Machine Age images of manufacturing equipment, products, and processes for corporate public relations use. By analyzing Winter’s oeuvre, exploring his relationships with museum administrators, and placing his images within their historical and institutional contexts, this talk explores the manner in which curators, journalists, and designers have used the idea of Shaker design to epitomize supposedly national traits of frugality, functionality, and simplicity.

William D. Moore is Director of the American & New England Studies Program at Boston University where he also serves as Associate Professor of American Material Culture in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture. He is the author of numerous publications concerning American artifacts, buildings, and landscapes, most notably Masonic Temples: Freemasonry, Ritual Architecture, and Masculine Archetypes. Formerly the executive director of the Enfield Shaker Museum, he is currently completing a manuscript entitled Shaker Fever: America’s 20th Century Fascination with a Communitarian, Celibate Sect.